My basic idea is that politics has gotten to be so professionalized and vicious that somebody has to change before we self destruct. In other words, what one side can do to another can be done TO it just as easily. I don't care to go back and recount all the times I've said that to myself while watching behaviors in Washington DC. Both parties do it.
For example, some Republicans are making an issue of the latest John Edwards dalliance. I do not like John Edwards at all, but people making hay out of a personal item like that will find that it will be visited back on them or one of them sooner or later. John Edwards should go home and take care of his deserving wife, who needs him. But Republicans should let private matters be. (That does not apply to what goes on in the White House, in my opinion, but a lot of people contended that it did during Clinton's embarrassing behaviors.)
On the other hand, I'm not sure politics can be any other than vicious, else we would have no Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Henry VIII and so forth. Maybe it's not a new thing after all.
We can have good politicians, though. Scoop Jackson, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey, Gerald Ford, and so forth. The kind that work with each other instead of trying to destroy each other. |
